Wednesday, August 11, 2010

A Roberto Burle Marx garden in Kuala Lumpur

The Picasso of landscape architecture, Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) designed the Central Park of the Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC)shortly before he died.

Roberto Burle Marx, a Brazilian, created gardens like abstract paintings, using native plants to create blocks of colour. Here are a few scenes at the park, which is actually on top of the enormous underground car park of the iconic Twin Towers of Kuala Lumpur. Judging from pictures of Roberto’s other gardens around the world, I think his garden in Kuala Lumpur would easily rank as one of his best works.

Hello Dr Ng, I am SO happy that I found your blog!! I am toying with the idea of planting avocado as I love the fruit and today I was searching Google and found your previous 2007 post on avocado. Could I ask if you know, where can I buy grafted avocado plant so that I can enjoy the fruits faster? Any nurseries that sell it? Do you sell it?

I used to produce yellow rain trees by grafting the apical shoots of yellow plants to the seedlings of green plants but the the success rate was very low and unpredictable. I have not done it for a long time now.

Last week I visited a plant nursery in Bidor and found a number of yellow rain trees, with trunks about 3 inches diameter. These are meant to be 'instant trees'. The contact address is fong_nursery@yahoo.com

Yesterday I met the manager of the garden and he told me the fountains are turned on at 1200-1400 and 1800-2200pm daily. I waited and indeed the fountains were playing after 6 pm. Unfortunately the light was not good for photography at 6 to 6.30 pm. Perhaps later, with the artificial lights on, would have been better, but I could not wait any longer.

My Picture

My latest books

My book "Tropical Forest Scientist - Francis S.P. Ng and FRIM - 1964-1991" has just been published by FRIM and is avalable at RM30. It is a 200 page illustrated book weighing 460g.

Forest Fruits, Seeds, Seedlings and Trees, published in October 2014 is sold out, so hang on to your copy because it is unlikely to be reprinted. It took 3 years to sell out and storage of unsold books is considered to be a big problem. The last book is sold at the same price as the first book but has cost a lot to store in an air-conditioned storeroom.

Tropical Horticulture and Gardening is available in MPH bookshops in Malaysia at less then RM 90. It is really cheap at this price. The book may also be purchased from MPH Online.

About Me

Consultant Botanist, BSc(Tasmania), DPhil(Oxford). Previous positions: Forest Research Institute Malaysia; Food and Agriculture Org. of the UN; Center for International Forestry Research. I design gardens (e.g. the Secret Garden of 1 Utama, the Rainforest of 1 Utama, the Laila Taib Ethnogarden of the Sarawak Biodiversity Centre in Kuching, write books and scientific papers, edit a forestry journal and mind grandchildren. I publish under two names: F.S.P. Ng for scientific papers and Francis S.P. Ng for other works. Most references can be found by Googling. There are over 100 blog reviews of the Secret Garden of 1 Utama.